30 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



synonymous expressions. 1 The place of dragons, 

 then, according to this exposition, will be sub- 

 terranean. In another Psalm, David couples 

 dragons and abysses? 



We must next inquire what is meant by the 

 word dragons. The Hebrew word usually thus 

 translated, but in some places rendered iv hales and 

 sea-monsters, and in others serpents, 3 is derived 

 from a root, which signifies to wail or lament ; 

 probably, alluding to the noise at certain times 

 emitted by those animals, that are more properly 

 regarded as dragons, by which I would under- 

 stand the Saurian race, without excluding the 

 others, which are sometimes certainly intended 

 by that word. Thus, when Jeremiah alludes, 

 under the name dragons, to animals that give 

 suck to their young, it is clear that he meant 

 some of the whale or seal kind, which are 

 mammiferous. Our translators, therefore, very 

 properly rendered the word sea-monsters, or as 

 in the margin, sea-calves. I may here observe, 

 though at first sight, the crocodile and the whale 

 seem widely separated from each other, that 

 there are certain species, at present found only 

 in a fossil state, and fitted with paddles instead 

 of legs, which are stated to combine characters 

 observable in the Cetaceans with those of the 



1 Job, xxxviii. 16, 17. 2 Ps. cxlviii. 7. 



3 Genes, i. 21. Lament, iv. 3. Exod. vi. 9, 10. 



